Fixed Versus Incremental Mindset
What is talent and where does it come from? Those with a "Fixed theory" assume that ability is innate. Those with an "Incremental theory" believe it comes through challenge and hard work.
If your the kind of person who struggles mightly to avoid the experience of failure, it's likely you reside near the "Fixed" end of the continuum. "Fixed theory" folks tend to approach challenges as occasions on which they're called upon to demonstrate their innate abilities, and so find failure especially horrifying to them. It's a sign to show how good they were but didn't measure up. Think of a sports star who is encouraged to think of herself as a natural — but who fails to put in sufficient practice to realize her potential. If talent is natural, her unspoken reasoning goes, then why bother?
"Incremental theory" folks are different because they think of abilities as emerging through tackling challenges, the experience of failure has a completely different meaning for them: it's evidence they are stretching themselves to their current limit. If they weren't they wouldn't fail.
Let's take weight-training for example, muscles grow by being pushed to their limits of current capacity. Muscle fibers tear and reheal. Among weightlifters, "training to failure" isn't an admission of defeat — it's a strategy.
Happily we're not saddled with one mindset rather than another. The fixed mindset can be shifted towards the incremental. Next time when failure strikes, say you flunk an exam or mishandle a social situation, consider that it's only happening because you pushed yourself to the limits of your present abilities — and therefore over the long run, improving them.
To encourage an incremental outlook in children take care to praise them for their effort rather than for their intelligence. The Incremental mindset is the one more likely to lead to success — but a more important point is that possessing an incremental outlook is a happier way to be. It allows you to abandon the stressful and tiring struggle of perfection. The only precondition to attain such an attribute is the heartfelt willingness to lose.
By John Johnson, (C-IAYT) inspired by the work of Carol Dweck and Oliver Burkeman
